


when my mind is elsewhere

by Misprinting (misprinting)



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: F/M, Post-Film, canon limb loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:24:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misprinting/pseuds/Misprinting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiccup has his insecurities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when my mind is elsewhere

Hiccup isn’t the only person in Berk with a missing limb, so for a long time he doesn’t have any kind of issues with it at all, beyond the obvious thing that it makes it quite hard to run. But, about four years after he loses it, he notices that Astrid seems to have a problem with it.

She’s never said anything. But then, other than the odd afternoon he spends swearing _at it_ for being utterly useless, he doesn’t really mention it either. He just notices that she avoids it in conversation and just in looking at it, and he wonders if she’s ashamed of him for it. ‘ _It’s a war wound_ ,’ he wants to tell her, ‘ _just like our parents’_.’ But he’s not a confrontational guy and he never wins an argument with her, anyway, so he just stews over it.

“What are you sulking over?” She asks him one day, pulling him down to sit with her and sort of across her - she still likes nothing more than pushing him around.

“Nothing,” He says, and goes to pull away from her, and suddenly (but also really not) they’re screaming at each other, and he tries to storm out on her but his bad foot gets caught in a rug and he trips.

“You are an _imbecile!_ ” She shouts at him, and then pulls him up and over to the sofa, touching his face gently, checking he hadn’t cracked anything open.

“‘M sorry.” He mumbles, miserably, mostly at her but a little at his poor, _poor_ abused body.

“Shut up.” She tells him, gentler even than her hands. “Where does it hurt?”

He smiles at her. “Only everywhere.”

She hits his shoulder and then kisses it, quick and sweet, and reaches for his foot. His _bad_ , not-there foot. Hiccup strains something in his back he sits up so quickly.

“What are you doing?” He asks, staring at her. She drops her head so her bangs are hiding her face but leaves her hand hovering over the join between his leg and the metal. “You hate my foot.”

Her head comes up and so does her hand, and she glares and hits him hard in the middle of his chest and says, “Don’t you dare. _You_ hate your foot. I don’t care at all how much of you’s metal, though sometimes I think it must at least be your _brain_.”

There’s a second where Astrid’s still glaring at Hiccup and he’s still gaping back at her, but then he gets his hand up to her cheek and his lips up to hers and she’s sitting in his lap and they’re kissing, furiously and sweetly and angrily and forgivingly all at once.

Astrid pulls away with one more darted little kiss to Hiccup’s lips and stands up, lifting his legs and sitting back down with them lying across her lap. She gently rolls up Hiccup’s trousers and takes off his metal foot, setting it down carefully and gently pressing her cold fingers to his scarred skin.

“That’s- that’s really nice, thank you, but you don’t-”

“Shut up.” Astrid says, and just smiles at him. He reaches for her spare hand and squeezes it, refusing to look away from her because he wants her to know exactly how much she means to him and looking away now would be a lie. She blushes, takes her hand from his leg and kisses her fingers, and she presses them into the skin she would never have been able to touch.


End file.
